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Category Archives: Angharad

I should not complain. This is the sort of job any faerie should be proud to have. But there are things about it that drive me up the wall.

For example, Her Majesty did not like that I chose a yellowish skin tone when she told me I needed a more exotic skin colour in order to impress the tourists. So I’ve now gone with something darker, of which she approves. “Oh, good: they’ll think you’re a svart alfar, like TAC, only more presentable to the public and nicer.”

I did at least get to keep the rainbow hair

I did at least get to keep the rainbow hair.

Bran decided that I should help him shoot some holiday shots in the village square. “But it’s after Christmas,” I said.

“Nonsense, Angharad: it’s only the fifth day of Christmas, traditionally speaking, and our potential guests want to see what we do in the Realm at Yule time, and you know that’s not just one day. Even though many of them are mortal and Christian, tourists who come here will likely be a little more knowledgeable about the histories of their holidays than the ones we read about so often on those web papers.”

“Web pages, Bran,” I corrected gently.

He scowled. “You and the Queen, always ready with the corrections. Can I help it if I’m ignorant of these things? I do quite like video games, you know.”

Yes, you could help it, I said to myself. “Fine; let’s take some photographs of the Square all decorated for Yule,” I said, this time out loud.

The Carousel

“Wait,” I asked, after about five minutes of Bran snapping photos of me all over the square. “Why do I have to be in all these photos?”

“It’s for the brochure,” Bran replied, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to say.

“The brochure? Nobody told me about a brochure.”

“Well, we do have to have promotional materials, and you are our hospitality co-ordinator,” Bran explained.

This is fun, remember?

“This is fun, remember?” Bran wanted me to smile. He wanted me to smile a lot.

Not that much fun.

“Not that much fun,” I retorted. “Do you want me to glamour some fangs or something?”

“Wrong time of the year for that, missy,” said Bran.

Missy? Seriously?

Do faeries even need postboxes?

“Let’s get you by the postbox with all the presents,” he said.

“Faeries don’t even need postboxes, you know.”

“I know that,” said Bran, “and you know that, but this is a London postbox, and Her Majesty feels nostalgic about her home city, so we try to bring bits of it here for her from time to time.”

“You stole this postbox.”

Bran coughed. “Davey acquired the postbox. I didn’t ask questions.”

“Is that real post sticking out of it?”

“Of course: wouldn’t be authentic any other way.”

“But what about people’s letters?”

“Davey assured me he’d waited until after the last pickup for that day,” replied Bran. “If the postman was late on the pickup, the post can’t have been that important.”

I had no idea what to say to that, so I just let him move me along.

Big finish!

“Now it’s time for the big finish! Lean back a little so I can get most of the tree in the shot, and, yes, big, big smile! Oh, that’s lovely!”

I rolled my eyes, but then I had an idea. “Can you take a close-up shot of me like this?” I asked.

Getting in to the spirit?

“Are you finally getting into the spirit, when we’re almost finished, Angharad?” he asked.

“Nope. I’m going to send this to my parents back in Cymru. They will hate this hairstyle.”

There are so many cool things to show you, but for now, I’ll just let Angharad gush about this insanely cool hoodie from The Nerdy Birdy.

And it comes in pink!

Angharad argued that she would not show off this hoodie unless it could be produced in pink, and luckily, Skeleton (kitori.unplugged) made a colour called Pastel Fury that suits Angharad just fine!

Of course, it comes in other colours as well. Angharad would only agree to be photographed in all of them if we let her wear the pink one first!

Blood Lust!

Here’s the Blood Lust colour; it’s a combination of reds and greys that Angharad said made her feel like devouring the flesh of her enemies, and possibly even a few friends!

Frosted!

We figured we’d intersperse colours Angharad was likely to like with colours she might not like so much. She loved the combination of white and blue here and even insisted on wearing the cosmic tights. Again.

Nightshade!

“This makes me want to have a seance, immediately,” Angharad said when she tried on the Nightshade colour. “Seriously. Ouija boards at midnight!”

Pumpkin Passion!

This one is so candycorn Angharad couldn’t possibly hate it, even though she did comment that it’s not fair to make someone with yellow skin dress in orange. We compensated by adding the green leaves. Pumpkin Passion is 31% off at Trick or Treat Lane.

Trick or Treat Laneopens tomorrow! There’s a lot of great stuff to see and experience, and BCreative Wilde has as usual done a bang-up job on the event layout and decoration. It’s fun just to walk about, but don’t forget to bring a bit of dosh….

It’s hard to believe I live in a castle now. Well, I live in a castle for the moment, at least until this internship is over and I have to go on to … to whatever’s next.

Waking up in a fairytale

Right now, it still feels as if I’m waking up in a fairytale every morning. I’m sure that will change—even if, right now, I can’t imagine ever getting used to waking up in a freaking castle.

Anyway, that’s not even the point of this. I’ve been trying to perfect my image, my persona, for when Awenia opens to the public. The Queen is off on some recruiting mission; she’s trying to get more Fae to be part of Awenia’s staff. She wants to get them all moved in and settled into their roles before the whole place is teeming with tourists, as she says. I have a feeling it will take a while before we are at the “teeming with tourists” stage, but what do I know?

And again, that’s not even the point of this. Because I’ve been trying to perfect my image, I’ve been spending a lot of time wandering around Awenia. And I can tell you right now, it’s weird up in here. Stuff changes every day. And I don’t mean like, someone comes along and plants flowers.

I mean, like, a whole building disappears overnight. Or sometimes just for a few hours. Small forests come and go here.

Beyond the Queen’s roses

And today, beyond the Queen’s roses, a circle of stones appeared. Now, I am one hundred percent, bona fide pureblood Lios Alfar, but I’ve never seen a place where stuff changes like this. It’s like the whole place is made of some kind of magical liquid or something, and sometimes stuff just oozes into other …. no, that sounds pretty foul; forget I said it like that. I’ll work on a new metaphor.

Now, my home Realm of Cymrien has a lot of stone, but it’s mostly used for farm fences, shoring up shorelines (yeah, I know. We can’t always have perfect word usage), and the occasional large building. But wood is sacred to the gods, and Cymrien temples are made of wood. While I’m sure visitors from elsewhere would be amazed by some of our live wood temples, I’ve always been fascinated by monuments made of dead stone. Our templebuilders, despite some dissent in the ranks, won’t even use petrified wood for temples, because this wood has died. Many of us do wear jewellery made of petrified wood, however. But I’m getting off topic. Again.

The point is, a freaking circle of stones appeared just outside the Queen’s castle. And I’d never seen one before, not up close anyway. I mean, there are some big stones up in the Fae Forest outside of town, but they’re mostly just single stones, or like three stones piled up together to make some kind of giant, peculiar table.

I might have run toward the stones

I might have run toward the stones. OK, I did run. But who knows how long stuff will stay, and it was important to me to get close enough to at least take a selfie for Ma and Da back home.

Stone Circle Selfie!

I used my drone to take this stone circle selfie. I love that you can see the Book Forest and the Awenia Treehouse in the background. I’ve not been in the treehouse myself yet, but the Queen tells me it will be a centre of diplomatic activity in Faerie, and also a place for her and her husband, Nathaniel, to get away from it all. She also says the views are great. I am looking forward to seeing it one of these days.

So, the stones. Well, they are beautiful. And the roses growing here are life-blood red, different from the roses so nearby in the Queen’s garden. Now, I’m not the most observant girl, me; but I am sure I felt some kind of presence inside the circle. It had a calming and peaceful effect, which is the same feeling I get inside of a live wood temple, which if you don’t know is a circle of trees planted just so. Their roots grow together, they are carefully tended so that their branches intertwine, and eventually they grow into a roof so well woven that it keeps rain out. Some of them are thousands of years old.

I will have to ask Her Majesty how such spirit can go into a material I always considered devoid of spirit.

Meanwhile, I think I’ll just spend a few hours lying on my back in this circle, smelling the grass, watching the changing shadows.

People say empty rooms are some great, undiscovered country. They are meant to be full of possibility. For me, they’re more an obstacle course to navigate.

When Queen Gwyneth told me that as her intern I’d be assigned a room in the castle, I didn’t expect to have my own tower. Well, half a tower. It’s really one big room and a little entrance hallway that also serves as the corridor from the main house to the secondary tower.

“I was going to give you both the tower rooms,” Her Majesty explained, “but then I realised there’s no set of stairs going directly from this room into the room above, and I thought you’d go batty running from one room to another via all the other staircases in the castle. I figured you’d end up spending most of your time in one room anyway, so this will be your private space. Mine and Nathaniel’s rooms are up in the main tower, and Wren and Drysi will be on the first floor, so you’ll be the only person with living space on the ground floor. You’ll almost have a castle to yourself!”

Not really, but I wasn’t going to argue. “It’s a great space,” I agreed.

“Wonderful. Your things have arrived from Cymriel, so you can have the day to put it together. But I expect you back at work with Nathaniel tomorrow on those brochures.” She winked as if she weren’t really serious about all the work she expects, but I know differently.

The bed comes first

Of course, the bed has to come first: it’s just a matter of bulk. I’m so glad my parents sent over my old bed—with a new duvet! I’ve slept in this bed for years, and it would feel sort of funny to sleep anywhere else. I guess I’m not as grown up as I want to be, because the sense of comfort I felt when the footmen brought that bed through was palpable.

Next, the vanity

Her Majesty insisted I have a vanity in my room, “because you’ll be going to all sorts of events and I need you to look your best. Thank you, by the way, for working on a new look for me: I need all my top level assistants to look exotic and interesting for the tourists.”

OK, fine. I’m not much for being super well put together, but I understand her logic.

After that, my favourite settee

Then, I had the footmen place my favourite settee, again lovingly recovered by some of my mum’s helpers. The book on the settee is my journal, and yes, it’s locked, and no, you can’t read it.

My desk!

My desk doesn’t look right without my computer and my lamp and my favourite cup and these pictures. All of these things are important to me. The unicorn lamp was a gift from one of my brothers. My favourite cup I found just a few weeks ago at a faire. I love cats, and unicorns, and of course My Little Pony (who doesn’t?). In fact, to use the current young people’s parlance, I would say that Fluttershy is my spirit animal. When Queen Gwyneth asked me to make myself over in order to look more interesting for tourists, I decided to become the fae incarnation of Fluttershy. So it’ll be like I’m cosplaying 24/7!

Decorated desk

Now we come to the part of decorating that I actually like: the putting-in of all my little things that makes my space mine. My unicorn chair has to go close to the desk so I can reach stuff, but far enough away from the computer that I won’t be tempted to spend all my time on Discord with my friends. Pegasus Pony and Bunny (I’m so creative with names!) have to go on the shelf, because they help me with assignments. I’m not making this up. And the Fairytale sign was another gift from the same brother who gave me the unicorn lamp. Eponas really gets me.

Hearth

After that, I worked on the hearth space. I know you can see a bit of the vanity on the left, but we’ll get to that: I forgot to take photographs as I was going along, so these were mostly taken after the room was finished.

I’d never had my own hearth to decorate before: our family’s home in Cymru is quite small in comparison to Queen Gwyneth’s amazing castle. She gave me a little design lesson the castle when I first visited, and she promises to take me to visit the designer, Rivendale, one day soon. She says everything in that shop is amazing.

This old mirror and the butterfly hangings come from my “hippy” period, which occurred more or less when it happened; I was in my 50s at the time, and the counterculture movement in the USA really spoke to me. The bunnycorn I’ve had since I was very small and I don’t remember where it came from. And of course, Fluttershy is there to guard me whilst I’m sleeping and make sure no monsters come through the fireplace. She’s good like that.

Fairy Collection

I was really surprised that mum included this little set of fairies in a box labeled “special decor”. She collects decor, and this is one of her favourite sets of figurines. I’ve always loved them, so she sent them along. Given the rate at which she collects stuff like this, I’m sure she already has a replacement set for the curio shelf back home.

Vanity stickers, and Mean Cats!

Yes, I have a large wall sticker depicting the My Little Pony cast. I love how Fluttershy is looking over them all, as if she is the grand caretaker. As for the cat balloon, I have a bunch of them, but I couldn’t find the others, so I put the Mean Cat pictures up on the window. Mean Cat is another one of my special animals: he (in his many incarnations) helps me when I desperately need to stab someone but would rather not get in trouble for oathbreaking, so I pretend that he is doing it instead of me. I mean, I pretend that whoever is bothering me gets stabbed by him, not that I somehow become him in a weird Son of Sam kind of way. Because that would be creepy.

After break, bed and balloon!

I took a break to see the hairstylist, Robin. She gave me this gorgeous cut with a braid extension (you can’t see it in this picture; it’s behind me), and then I found the kitty dress and my witch hat and my favourite pink boots in one of the boxes. In that box for some reason, was this amazing unicorn balloon, which of course I put up right away: a girl can’t have too many bedroom guardians; am I right? And—about that wall sticker. When I was in my 70s, my mother got this idea in her head that everybody needed to have a personal statement, preferably displayed prominently in their living space. So… this is my personal statement. It may be a bit juvenile, but that’s how I feel about life. If everyone isn’t a pony, they should be.

By the time I got to this stage, I was tired, but there was still one completely unfinished and undecorated wall. “OK”, I said to the helper fairies, “We need some shelves up in here, pronto.”

They were good to oblige me and made sure the shelves looked like trees. I approve of this.

My favourite part!

Then it was time for my favourite part: my collections. I suppose the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree here: I have so many little things I’ve collected over the years that they took up, well, several boxes, and there’s not enough room to put all of them up here, so I just put up my favourites.

Real fairies!

Now, some people have been downright critical of me for this collection: these are real fairies from Cymriel, and I caught them when I was very small and put them into jars and gave them great living environments. I am very careful to feed and water them frequently. They will be such a wonderful reminder of my homeland: the native plants in the terrariums just make everything so much nicer. I know they are happy because they’re always smiling, so don’t look at me like that.

Meowls!

I love meowls. I used to train them and show them back in Cymriel, and these are ten of my absolute favourites: the rest have been left in the company of one of our gardeners who loves them almost as much as I do. They all have names, and there is a story behind each one, but I won’t bore you with details. They do get up to some mischief, but once they’ve been here long enough that they understand this is home base, I’ll open a window and let them fly in and out as they please. Until then, my handmaid is going to have her hands full (see what I did there?)!

When we got to this stage, there were still about six boxes of stuff left over. For right now, they’re being stored in the corridor: Queen Gwyneth says she will drop them into a pocket dimension for me in a few days when the moon’s right for it.

Am I finished? No clue! I’ll probably want to change things up in a week or so: that’s how my squirrel brain works. But for now, I’m pretty happy.

Many of the items in this post are featured items from the Spoonful of Sugar Festival. Spoonful of Sugar is a charity event to benefit Doctors Without Borders, which provides medical care to vulnerable people and in crisis situations all over the world. The festival offers entertainment events, fashion shows, and of course many ways to donate to this great cause, including five shopping sims! Make sure and visit Spoonful of Sugarduring the month of September: you won’t be sorry, and you’ll probably come home with enough swag to decorate an entire castle tower!

Angharad’s new skin: The Plastik, Elvenne Skin, Female, SunshulaThere’s so much else to credit here, and Angharad only appears in a couple of the photos; the main focus is the decor. If you have any questions about anything she’s wearing, just IM me in world!

You don’t know me, but you’re about to. My name is Angharad Eleri, and I am just over 100 years old. That makes me, in my conservative Cymric parents’ opinion, old enough to strike out into the world. Really, in this day and age, most Sidhe parents allow their children to grow up in about the same timeline as mortals do, because our long lifespans allow us to accomplish so much, and because so many of the mortals that we must spend time with have such short lives in comparison. But I was born in 1908, and things were different then.

My introspective moments

In my introspective moments, I sometimes think about friends of mine, members of Clan Eleri who were born so much later than I. They already experience the wider world as adults, while I’ve had to sit at home and learn old-fashioned Sidhecraft and tell stories to another generation of younglings who all fly the nest before me.

A relaxing garden

So now, eight years after I came of ages according to my parents, here I sit, in a relaxing garden, a few days before my internship will begin. And I’m glad I waited. The decision reached by the Global Ministry for Supernatural Affairs, or whatever it’s called, means I can live in a place where I can walk among humans but still have a more-or-less Fae environment. When word went out that Queen Gwyneth was opening the first Fae realm to be accessible for mortals and other beings, I jumped at a chance she didn’t even offer; I sent her a message asking if she needed a hospitality intern. I always knew I wanted to travel, and going in to travel, tourism, and hospitality just seemed like a logical choice.

Settling in

Now I’m just getting used to the environment. It’s a full season before I start, but as it’s my first “real” job, I wanted to get the lay of the land. The thing is, Awenia is very far from anywhere else, and the Realm is constantly in flux. It looks a lot like Her Majesty just can’t decide what she wants it to be. Now, there are rumours that Faery may completely reshape itself to be more accessible to tourists. It seems pretty accessible to me, but what do I know?

A new discovery every day

Today, I discovered this beautiful little pool. I think it was some kind of ruin last time I came here. Anyway, it has a lovely old arch, and there are trees and tables and benches all around. The perfect place for a late summer afternoon thinking session.

Wondering

I wonder what my actual duties will be. I’d love to be greeting visitors and giving tours of the Realm, but I’m sure there will be some administrative bits and pieces as well. I know Queen Gwyneth wants there to be different kinds of experience tourists can have, like a midnight excursion into Unseelie Lands for those who like to be scared a bit. Maybe she’d let me come up with a few of those ideas on my own. I don’t know how much of a control freak she is: a lot of Fae royalty are really my way or the highway types. Don’t you love that expression? I learned it when I was attending university in the fifties. It’s probably a really old expression that kids don’t say any more. I’ll have to learn all the latest slang so I don’t sound stupid with youth groups. There’s so much I’ll have to do.

Stretching

But now, the light is starting to turn golden, so I’m going to go down the pub and see if I can get to know some more of the local beings who are helping to put the Realm together and make the administrative stuff work in the end.

I don’t want to say that my favourite part about this is being so far away from my family…. but it kind of is. Realm-hopping is very difficult for most Fae; we can’t all bounce around from Realm to Realm like Her Majesty and her Consort and the other beings rumoured to be in Awenia’s upper echelons. Maybe I’ll learn how if I spend more time with the Queen. I wonder if I’ll get to spend any time with her at all: she’s quite famous, even though parageographically, Awenia is sort of on the edge of nowhere.

But I am digressing now. It’s time to go off to the pub.

Angharad originally started life as a photographic avatar, years ago when I was participating in the Create Your Own Tarot events, and I called her “Teenage Waste Princess” because coming up with a name for her just seemed like more effort than I wanted to expend. She also played TAC’s roommate in the History of TAC posts. I found out that “Angharad” as a name means “without shame”, so I thought it was a great name for someone shameless. Angharad will be a permanent NPC in Awenia. I hope you’ll get to know her much better over the weeks to come.

The Spoonful of Sugar Festival is a charity event benefiting Doctors Without Borders. Doctors Without Borders sends medical aid to places where need is great, like conflict zones. They support humanitarian causes and report on the problems they see. Nearly 90% of donations to Doctors Without Borders goes straight to the work itself.